after there was a revolution. At that time they also gained the ability to vote.
They were allowed to walk across the sidewalk to enter stores, but not to stand on them, or walk along them.
This was only 58 years ago, I think. It really doesn't seem possible.
Here's an article I looked up to remind DU'ers of the racism shown to Bolivia's first citizens only a couple of years ago (not counting, of course, the filthy slaughter by machine guns mounted on truck flatbeds in Pando to murder them as they tried to cross a creek, on September 19th, also a couple of years ago):
BOLIVIA: Local Indigenous Leaders Beaten and Publicly Humiliated
Thursday, 29 de May de 2008
By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, May 27 (IPS) - Bolivia may have its first-ever indigenous president, but racism is alive and well in this country, as demonstrated by the public humiliation of a group of around 50 indigenous mayors, town councillors and community leaders in the south-central city of Sucre.
The incident, which shook the country but received little attention from the international press, occurred on Saturday, when President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, was to appear in a public ceremony in Sucre to deliver 50 ambulances for rural communities and announce funding for municipal projects. But in the early hours of Saturday morning, organised groups opposed to Morales began to surround the stadium where he was to appear a few hours later. Confronting the police and soldiers with sticks, stones and dynamite, they managed to occupy the stadium.
The president cancelled his visit, and the security forces were withdrawn, to avoid violent clashes and bloodshed. But violent elements of the Interinstitutional Committee, a conservative pro-autonomy, anti-Morales civic group that is backed by the local university and other bodies, continued to harass and beat supporters of the governing Movement to Socialism (MAS) and anyone who appeared to belong to one of the country’s indigenous communities.
A mob of armed civilians from Sucre, partially made up of university students, then surrounded several dozen indigenous Morales supporters, including local authorities who had come from other regions to attend the ceremony and were unable to leave the city after the event was called off.
The terrified indigenous people, who had sought refuge in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Sucre, were stripped of their few belongings, including money, identity documents and watches, and forced to walk seven kilometres to the House of Liberty, a symbol of the end of colonial rule in Bolivia, which was declared there on Aug. 6, 1825. In the city’s main square in front of the building, they were forced to kneel, shirtless, and apologise for coming to Sucre. They were also made to chant insults to Morales like "Die Evo!"
More:
http://www.indigenousportal.com/es/Noticias/BOLIVIA-Local-Indigenous-Leaders-Beaten-and-Publicly-Humiliated.html~~~~~“We’ve Got to Kill These Indians”
On May 24, Sucre once again exploded in racist violence. During Independence Day celebrations, groups associated with the Inter- Institutional Committee detained, robbed, and beat with sticks several dozen indigenous peasants, including the mayor of a rural municipality, who had come to the city to attend an event planned by MAS. The victims were marched around Sucre’s plaza half-naked, holding the flag of Chuquisaca, in front of the press and hundreds of spectators and were then forced to get on their knees and beg for forgiveness for supporting Morales. They then watched in shock as their ponchos and indigenous flags were burned amid shouts of “Dirty Indians”, “Long live the capital” and “We’ve got to kill these Indians.”
http://www.indypendent.org/2008/07/20/bolivia-divided /
~~~~~Page last updated at 17:09 GMT, Thursday, 21 May 2009 18:09 UK
Colonial scars run deep in Bolivia
~snip~
At a local Quechua language radio station, Marianela Paco Duran, one of their journalists has just come off air.
She was attacked as she covered last year's Independence Day celebrations, along with other Indians who were beaten and stripped as they tried to march to Sucre's main square. They had been trying to demonstrate their support for President Morales' constitutional reforms, which give Indians many rights and which recognise their culture.
Merianela Duran still weeps as she recalls the humiliation inflicted on her people by those she considers colonialists.
"They said to us: 'Go back to your pigs, to the countryside and your cows.' We must never let them humiliate us like that again. It is still in their psychology. They behaved as if there were defending their own, as it if was their right," she said.
Bolivia, like many Andean countries, is struggling to address the imbalance at the heart of its society; here a minority seems unable to accept that the majority Indians are equal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8061841.stm ~~~~~Autonomous" fascism in Bolivia
Aporrea reports:
Last Saturday, far-right groups attacked, punched and battered a group of peasants who had come to a stadium in the city of Sucre, where president Evo Morales was to deliver 50 ambulances and several thousand homes to local residents. About 20 Quechua peasants were humiliated and forced to march semi-naked toward the central square of Sucre, where they were forced to kneel and chant slogans against President Morales. These violent events left 27 wounded, according to local authorities.
Aporrea calls Sucre "the kingdom of the Ku Klux Klan in Bolivia"; a somewhat confusing take, since the ringleaders of this violence are not white but mestizo. It is difficult to tell them apart from their victims just by looking; I could only tell who was who by who was standing and who was kneeling; who was yelling triumphantly, and who was silent and miserable; who wore a shirt, and who did not. That's not a whole lot of outward difference. And yet these mestizos identify more with their white ancestors than their indigenous ones, no matter how much their own appearance says otherwise. In Bolivia, it seems, your socioeconomic status is directly dependent on how much European blood you have. Which explains why the local white oligarchy hates the president so; he's a full-blooded indigenous. In their eyes, he's not a popular, elected leader; he's just a dirty Injun.
Here's Nick Buxton's take, from Bolivia Rising:
Whilst in Lima, I talked to Wilmer Flores, a MAS deputy from the Sucre region who recounted how he had been chased from the public square and cornered by a group of students who stamped on him, beat him, shouting "Kill the Indian. Let's kill them all one by one." It was as one of them started with broken glass to try and scratch his eyes out that a policeman happened to pass and the group escaped. His attempts to find his potential murderers have met a brick wall of complicity and evasion from all Sucre's legal authorities.
Watching TV, I noticed that the brutalised campesinos were kneeling in Sucre's central square, in front of the "Casa de Libertad" (Freedom House) from where Bolivia's independence was declared. It was the same square where Deputy Wilmer Flores was seen, chased and almost lost his life. Similarly in Santa Cruz, various attacks have taken place in its main central square.
The choice of location for the Right's violence is no coincidence. It was here in the heart of Sucre that Bolivia as an exclusive state which marginalized its indigenous majority took shape. It is from key municipal and state buildings in Santa Cruz and Sucre that a coterie of privileged families has led a vitriolic backlash against even the possibility of social justice in Bolivia. In Sucre these families, including Jaime Barron, the Rector of the University and the city mayor Aydee Nava have instigated violence, egged on by a rabid media, in an attempt to stop the constitutional assembly last November.
More:
http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/2008/05/autonomous_fascism_in_bolivia.html
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